An Era Long Gone
by DolbyDigital
Summary: Somehow, it's just the two of them – alone in a house filled with ghosts of an era long gone.


_"Here's to alcohol, the rose coloured glasses of life."_

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

Somehow, it's just the two of them – alone in a house filled with ghosts of an era long gone. He'd managed to go for most of the day without leaving the sheltered quiet of his borrowed room, but the need for sustenance had become too much and he had been forced to leave the sanctuary his room provided from the insanity that permeated the entire house.

He stood at the top of the short flight of stairs leading down to the kitchen below, watching the lone silhouette hunched over a bottle at the large wooden table in the centre of the room. The smell of alcohol was faint from where he stood; as he walked slowly down the stairs the smell became stronger, overwhelming him with its intensity – sweaty and stale and bitter and just a hint of urine – it smelled like a pub late at night.

He made his way carefully over to the hunched figure – flicking on the light as he passes – and ignored the crunch of glass under his scuffed old trainers, loud in the otherwise silent kitchen. He turned on the tap – wincing slightly at the grating noise it made – and filled a chipped and dusty glass with water, trying to ignore the slightly yellow tinge to the liquid and the bits of grime floating at the surface.

He approached the man with caution – there was no telling how long he had been sitting there – and laid a careful hand on his shoulder. The jump and startled exclamation that the action received wasn't wholly unexpected, but the long bony fingers seizing tightly onto his wrist in a grip that was sure to bruise came as a surprise to him. The sharp yellowed fingernails dug into the tender flesh of his wrist, and he couldn't help the slight gasp of pain that escaped his lips.

Just as suddenly as he'd grabbed hold, he let go with a laugh and a wide grin which displayed all of his crocked yellowy-brown teeth – teeth that had once been perfect if old fading photographs were anything to go by – and the smell of firewhiskey on his breath was possibly more effective at keeping him still than the hand on his wrist had been smelling so bad that he could taste it in the back of his throat.

He held out the glass – the lukewarm water sloshing over the brim with the abrupt movement and dripping onto the stained floor – and tried to get the other man to take it, drink it, push it away – _anything_ – but he showed no sign that he had even seen the proffered beverage and continued to stare at him with such a mad intensity that he was beginning to regret ever having agreed to stay in this house.

He began to back away slowly – still holding the glass out in front of him like a peace offering, having forgotten that he was even holding it – when the man lunged at him with a speed that belied his drunken state reversed their positions and had him efficiently pinned against the table with his back arched painfully against the unforgiving wood in a matter of seconds.

Long greasy black hair framed his face, falling in dirty tangles around both of them like a shield from the world. His breath escaped his lungs in a large rush of air, completely taken off guard by the sudden movement.

"Didn't we have fun though?" he questioned in a voice that seemed to steady and sure considering how much he had already had to drink. "You remember, don't you?" The earnestness in the other man's grey eyes made him almost feel guilty for not being able to follow the conversation, but the lack of oxygen was taking most of his attention and prevented him from forming a retort of any kind.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know why... I didn't mean to. I... But you already forgave me. You..." he muttered, their faces inches apart, his eyes oddly vacant in a way that suggested that he wasn't entirely there. It was as if he was revisiting a conversation from the past; something that had absolutely nothing to do with him, and he couldn't help but feel a little guilty at intruding even as he struggled to breath.

"You remember? You... But it's okay. You said it was okay. So it's... okay," his voice started to falter towards the end, fading out until the last word was just a whisper so quiet that he wouldn't have heard it if they hadn't been pressed so close together.

"But then you left... I left and then I came back and then you left. It was too short... Not enough time... Never enough time..." he backed away, releasing his hold and causing the other man to fall to the floor in a tangle of gangly limbs and red hair and gasping breaths, still quietly muttering to himself in broken sentences that were nearly silent.

Abstractly, he realised that he should probably be scared; he was trapped – _alone _– in a house with a madman, struggling to breathe on the cracked tiles of the kitchen floor. He watched as the other man paced around the table, a slight sway in his step that showed his drunkenness in a way that his speech had managed to avoid.

He tried to refrain from moving, holding as still as possible in an attempt to avoid the attentions of the other man. He was still struggling to catch his breath when he saw him reach into a dusty cupboard, to door creaking loudly on its hinges, and procured another bottle of the strong alcohol.

He unscrewed the cap and took a large swig, not even bothering with the pretence of getting another glass to replace the one shattered on the floor. He staggered back around the table and fell into his seat, sprawling across the chair in a gesture that years ago would probably have seemed arrogant and casual but now looked more like a man who is desperate and with nothing to lose.

He sighed quietly, not daring to get up from his position on the floor at the other man's feet.

He regretted not staying in his room.


End file.
